I come to you for wisdom and guidance on how to use a feature of the Monastary, in hopes of becoming a more useful and productive community member.

Early the afternoon on which I wrote this, I saw a reference in the CB to the "tick tock nodelet," and how to enable it. Still having much to learn regarding the Monastary, and curious what it was and how to use it, I looked at my User Settings at both the "Frontpage Nodelets" and "non-Frontpage Nodelets," only to find 17 items in each (at the time of this writing), some of which I thought I could fathom their use, others which I found myself in need of clue regarding.

While the advice I received in the CB was to turn them on and try them (which I probably will), I would like to ask the following:

What is the use of each nodelet? (I could not find a listing of them giving a list of each and its use.) Advantages and/or disadvantages? (As appropriate)

Which nodelets do you use, or do you use the standard set?

Which are the most/least useful to you?

For those nodelets which allow you to do certain functions, how do you use them? Any pitfalls to avoid?

Beyond this, my only other question would be this-is there an easier way to order them than to turn them all on then spend xx minutes clicking the up/down links to move them around?

My thanks in advance for whatever wisdom and guidance you may choose to bestow upon this inquiry.

More nodelets = slower page loads. Especially watch out for the cpan nodelet, there were some problems with it a while back. I usually just leave the chatterbox, other users, and sometimes the voting booth on.

I've got frontpage as chatterbox only, but a fair number on nonfrontpage nodes: XP Nodelet, Chatterbox, Voting Booth, PmDev Nodelet, Information, Personal Nodelet, Other Users, Daily Best, and Weekly Best (in that order). I don't see a noticable slowdown. I should suspect that only the ones that make external connections (everydevel, cpan, and probably somthing else I'm forgetting) would give much of a slowdown.

We are using here a powerful strategy of synthesis: wishful thinking. -- The Wizard Book

Sticking with what cjf has already said, my suggestion would be to not use too many nodelets, especially the ones that make 'outside' connections (such as the CPAN nodelet) as they may cripple your page loads for good.

Answering to your question(s):

Which nodelets do you use, or do you use the standard set?

Yes, I'm using the standard ones and even less than that. The few nodes that I find specifically useful is the 'Personal Nodelet' where I keep links to nodes I like to frequent often (such as 'Saints in our Book' {grin}). I'm not sure as to the chatterbox. It may or may not be useful. However, I still chose to stick with it at least for a little while. Along with CB, 'Other Users' nodelet is a good pick. I appreciate knowing who's in the monastery with me at any given point. And the last two are the 'Sections' and the 'Information' nodelets. That's all ;-).

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other